Grocery Bag Photos : ‘Wanted’ Children Posters Spreading

They are America’s new “wanted” posters: everyday items that carry the photographs not of the nation’s notorious criminals but of its missing children.

And they are about to to become a fact of daily life across the country.

The faces of missing children have quickly become a familiar sight on the sides of milk cartons distributed by more than 100 local dairies across the nation. They have begun to appear on thousands of Chicago buses and subway trains. And soon, in California, 100 million grocery bags each month--a quarter of all those distributed--will carry the faces of children who may be runaways or abduction victims or who have simply disappeared.

After that, similar pictures may arrive with monthly utility and charge-card bills. Posters of missing children could turn up in banks, at car washes, in shopping malls. In Kansas and Missouri, pictures of missing children are already being enclosed in some photo-processing envelopes. Cereal companies, a pasta manufacturer and an egg-carton maker are exploring the possibility of putting such pictures on their packages.

“Wanted posters never got the distribution that these pictures are getting,” said Jay Howell, executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit clearinghouse for information, based in Washington, D.C. “I think we’ll see a whole lot more. This is an issue that is ripe for technology and innovative solutions.

“This thing is burgeoning,” Howell said.

“We see (the posters) as an effective way to reunite young persons with their families,” Cmdr. Joe P. Mayo, head of the Chicago Police Department’s Youth Division, said.

Annually 1.5 million children are reported missing, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. An estimated 20,000 to 50,000 are victims of foul play, and up to 500,000 are taken from the parent who has custody by the one who doesn’t. An additional 1 million are runaways, a spokeswoman for the center said.

So far, the new programs to find missing children have had only one success. Last week, a Lancaster, Calif., teen-ager, Doria Paige Yarbrough--missing since early November--saw a television report that showed her photo on an Alta-Dena Dairy milk carton and decided to return to her family.

Tuesday, 13-year-old Lyching Pu came back to her Chicago home the day her photograph was posted on a city bus, but a transit authority official said her return was just a coincidence.

Wednesday, the California Grocers Assn. announced that, starting in mid-March, it will cooperate with local law enforcement agencies to print photos of four missing children on the sides of grocery bags every month.

The four children featured in the first printing are Laura Ann Bradbury, 3, of Huntington Beach, missing from her family’s campsite at the Joshua Tree National Monument since October; Monica Judith Bonilla, 7, abducted from her Burbank home in September, 1982; Kevin Collins, 11, missing since February from San Francisco, and Clark Toshiro Handa, 4, missing from Fairfield since August.

Appeal to Supermarkets

Don Beaver, president of the association, said he hopes that all 400 million grocery bags in the state eventually will carry the pictures. So far, 175 supermarkets and supermarket chains statewide have responded to the appeal, made by the grocers and Assemblyman Gray Davis (D-Los Angeles).

The national center’s Howell said that supermarkets seem to be the most promising sites for publicizing missing children. He said that, in addition to printing pictures on food packages and bags, photos could be displayed in the supermarket.

In Chicago, 1 million riders daily on 3,000 buses and trains will see the pictures of four new missing children each month. “Please Help Us Find Our Children,” the posters say over a police phone number.

The $3,000 monthly printing cost will be paid by the transit agency. After a month in buses and trains, the posters will be offered to shopping malls for display. Chicago transit officials think that other bus and train agencies across the country will adopt similar programs.

‘Victims of Pornography’

Chicago is focusing on children who have been missing for two months or more and those in situations in which foul play may be involved, Mayo said. “These children often wind up victims of pornography, prostitution, narcotics or pedophilia,” he added.

The poster program is also likely to spread to other countries. Mayo said that his office has been contacted by police agencies in Canada, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain.

Publicizing missing children on milk cartons began in Des Moines last autumn as part of a so-far unsuccessful search for two missing newsboys. On Jan. 1, Hawthorn Mellody Inc., a Whitewater, Wis., dairy, began putting pictures on milk cartons distributed in northern Illinois. Other dairies across the country have followed suit.

Pictures may also turn up on the outside of mail. Howell said that one idea is to print pictures of missing children on stamps that would be affixed to letters like Christmas or Easter seals, in addition to regular postage stamps.

Times staff writer Lenore Look in Los Angeles contributed to this article.